On "Sinners" | aetataureate

Quick Thoughts on Sinners (there are spoilers!)

This page is under construction. Last updated June 7, 2025.

I'm aetataureate, or aeta. I'm an artist and writer.

I watched Sinners last night with my partner, and I also recently watched a really thoughtful video essay about Black horror, and the absence of the plantation despite its role in chattel slavery, murder, and torture. You can find that video on the YouTube channel Legacy of Folktales here.

Sinners really devastated me. The subject matter is already deadly serious -- two Black brothers in 1930s Mississippi buy and plan to open a business, despite the obstacles all around them created by structural racism and overt violent racism. These include local Ku Klux Klan leadership; the reliance of local Black workers on the "fun money" and wooden nickels they're paid by plantations; and, finally, vampires. But Sinners is also about what it means to choose to live the rest of your life, whatever that means for you. The twin brothers, known as Smoke and Stack, served together in World War I and must now find a path forward. Their cousin Sammie is the only survivor of the night and must rejoin the living. Even the musician Delta Slim says at the beginning that he's just biding his time until he dies, and he seems to hope that happens soon.

I'm not Black, a historian, or even a particularly adept musician or anything. My opinions on this movie are low down the list of important people's takes. But the movie made me think about so many different things that I wanted to just list some thoughts. I've seen a few non Black friends in my orbit describe the movie in, almost like, summer blockbuster terms -- it kicks ass! It's a good time! It rips! -- and hopefully this list can spark some deeper thinking about something I found to be really complex and tragic in a way taken directly from real life. These characters are incredibly inspiring at the same time they're realistically flawed and punished for simply living their lives. Anyway. Okay. Investigate any of these points further on your own.

Content Warning: I'm talking frankly about really strong, painful actions and themes that are motivated by hatred and racism. My goal is to offer some talking and thinking points to fellow white viewers. This discussion is serious, many of these issues are gravenly serious, and this is a provocative piece of work that calls for a lot of introspection, especially for white Americans.

The materials of belief: This movie rejects the Christian flavor of vampires, with the lead white Irish vampire saying that Christian rituals were also imposed on his people by colonizers. The rest of vampire lore, once you subtract the Christianity, has always had more of a pagan flavor. In Sinners, we see the wooden stake, garlic, and boundaries around the home in conversation with traditional medicine they refer to as Hoodoo in the movie. To me, this makes a lot more sense. Annie imbues plants and items with energy, and it is plants and items that combat the vampires.
Selling your soul for the blues: The folktale of a blues musician selling his soul is embodied by Robert Johnson, who met the devil at a crossroads and received a powerful guitar. In Sinners, Sammie has a guitar his cousins say at first is from a famous musician, but we find out it actually belonged to their evil father. He's not the devil, but he's close.
Selling your soul in general: The story pushes back on the traditional good and evil dichotomy of vampire stories, where vampires represent a craven, restrictive lifestyle that embodies an indulgent living curse. Sinners' vampires tell the Black people at the juke joint that they would be freer as vampires, and their argument is persuasive. Their cognitive dissonance is not any worse than what these Black residents confront every day as sharecroppers. They were told they were free by white America, and they weren't.
Civility: Annie helps her group survive because she recognizes the ersatz manners of the vampires. Indeed, very ritualized manners, including avoiding eye contact and never being in certain situations with white people, help many Black people survive then and now. A direct modern comparison may be to the infamous "talk" that Black parents have with their children about how to act if you're pulled over by the police. And as a traditional healer, Annie is even more tuned in to how people's behaviors represent how they feel inside.
The Blues Brothers: The movie's first half or so reminded me a lot of The Blues Brothers, which is also about a pair of infamous brothers who "get the band back together" through a series of errands. Indeed, one plot point in the Blues Brothers movie is a ripped from the headlines Nazi rally, scheduled in one of Chicago's suburbs that has the highest concentration of Jewish residents. When Smoke and Stack say Chicago is just "Mississippi with skyscrapers," they're speaking to Chicago's long documented history of terrible anti-Black racism and segregation.
Very different music: When the vampires first knock at the old mill, they play some competent but very white folk music. They continue playing white folk songs, one that almost borders on being a murder ballad. These songs may represent some kind of social movement within their own white cultures, like the vampire's Irish roots; but when sung by white people who try to intimidate Black people in the south, it's very sinister. They continue playing this music outside, and more and more Black victims, now vampires, are compelled to do a ritualized, performative dance supporting the white vampires.
Time collapses: During the musical performances at the old mill, time folds over, and dancers and performers appear from all points in human civilization. But we know from the intro that the music's power also attracts evil. The lead vampire seems to be much older than anyone else, while he also delivers social justice language that feels contemporary to 2025. It seems like his tools of persuasion are heightened by tapping into this time-collapsing ambience.
And of course. The vampires: It's not subtle that white vampires are trying to bleed these Black characters dry. They try to intrude into a private party for local sharecroppers, then use the structure surrounding their party to funnel more victims to where the vampires are waiting. We're shown that, from the vampires' perspective, the walls protecting people inside the party virtually fall away and leave them exposed. The white vampires also know that Black residents of the area don't have a lot of freedom of movement to begin with, and threaten that the Ku Klux Klan plans to kill them all anyway.
Near death: I have a personal pet peeve with most death scenes, where a family member is just telling their dying loved one over and over that they can't die, spending the vital last moments yelling to people offscreen for help. So one of my biggest crying triggers in this movie is when Stack is dying and his brother, Smoke, just holds him and tells him it's okay to let it go, and that he loves him. I am crying again thinking about it. The characters in this movie are deeply tender and their relationships are so well written.
A community survives together: I'll just say that no one in this movie decides it's a good idea to split up. They physically restrain the members of their group who try to split off. Their survival depends on simply staying put and supporting each other. But it's true in other ways throughout the whole movie. Delta Slim has a reliable gig that he does not want to lose. The sharecroppers cover for each other. Smoke and Stack at first fight these community bonds, for reasons that never seem incorrect or anything; but by the end, they are in community again.
Ancestors and elders: Sammie's father does not understand his son, but he welcomes him back to church the next morning. Delta Slim knows all along that he will physically put his body between the vampires and the group in the old mill. Annie asks the ancestors or spirits for guidance about how to protect her group. She knows that one of the worst evils of the vampires is that those people will have that link severed. This mirrors and continues the severing of family history and knowledge for enslaved people and their descendents. But Smoke and Stack have such a powerful relationship that Stack is able to promise Smoke he will not harm Sammie during his long life (and elder self played by Buddy Guy!!!).